The Post Mistress

It’s the same procedure for Sabine Weidhase, come what may: twice a day, the 59-year-old visits the post office in the center of Zeulenroda: in the morning, to collect the incoming mail for Bauerfeind. In the afternoon, she is back in the main hall, to post the day’s outgoing mail – be it catalogs or business letters to customers, payslips for employees or registered letters to Singapore.

The six hours between the two post office visits vary so much that Sabine Weidhase says: “No two days are the same.” Of course, her responsibilities are clearly defined with incoming mail, mail distribution and outgoing mail, but which part of her work takes up more of one day and less of another, is not set in stone.

If there is a lot of incoming mail, it will take longer to allocate the letters to the individual departments. After all, Sabine Weidhase also opens selected mail. She sorts invoices for the Accounting Department, for example. Health insurance certificates are quickly sent to the HR Department. If this agile post mistress then “only” had to distribute and collect letters and parcels in the Tower, her job would be relatively easy. But Sabine Weidhase also has to go “on tour” with her trolley in any weather. That means she visits all the departments on the extensive Bauerfeind site, empties and fills several mailboxes or storage locations in the Production, Yarn Covering and Technology Departments or in the BIC. Sometimes, she delivers the items without being noticed and hardly says a word to people who are on the phone or are focusing on their screens. Other times, colleagues desperately await her arrival. “Did you remember me, Sabine?,” asks a colleague in Hall 1 and gratefully receives the internal mail folders.

Sometimes small gestures cause joy. And sometimes, it is little things that are annoying. “If a letter is addressed to Mrs. Miller or Mr. Smith, or simply to ‘Bauerfeind’, it can be quite difficult,” Sabine Weidhase reports of her “annoyance”, which she would never express as such. She has been working for Bauerfeind for long enough – since 1994 in different departments – to be able to always find a solution, in this case the recipients. Or she will simply ask. This, however, has not always been possible recently due to COVID-19. Now, mail (for the Logistics Department, for example) is delivered and collected without personal contact. At the right time, a forklift comes around the corner. The determined post mistress stops it and everything is sorted five seconds later. “Thank you, the envelope needs to go to Gera,” she says and happily continues on her way.